But when the original TAL episode aired, one of the reasons it
created such a stir was that the show said that it had carefully
fact-checked Daisey's story.

Here's TAL host Ira Glass in the original episode:

When I saw Mike Daisey perform this story on stage, when I left
the theater I had a lot of questions. I mean, he's not a
reporter, and I wondered, did he get it right? And so
we've actually spent a few weeks checking everything that he says
in his show.

TAL spend "a few weeks checking everything" Mike Daisey said ...
and it has now retracted the entire episode?

Daisey was busted for his lies by Rob Schmitz of NPR's
Marketplace, who has been reporting on Apple's supply chain for
the last year and a half. Schmitz describes finding Daisey's
translator and then
confronting him here.

Here's the full fact-checking section of the original TAL
transcript:

When I saw Mike Daisey perform this story on stage, when I left
the theater I had a lot of questions. I mean, he's not a
reporter, and I wondered, did he get it right? And so we've
actually spent a few weeks checking everything that he says in
his show. We invited Apple to come onto the program and respond, and
they turned us down. We invited Foxconn to come onto the program and respond,
and they also said no. Mike, however, was willing to come in and
explain his methods at Foxconn's gates and in the factories that
he visited.

Mike Daisey

I had talked to about 100 workers, a little over 100, over a
number of different days.

Ira Glass

Staying outside the gates?

Mike Daisey

Outside the gates. And I went to about 10 different factories
when I was posing.

Ira Glass

When you met with the union workers, how many of those did you
meet with?

Mike Daisey

There were three of them.

Ira Glass

And then the workers who came through to meet you?

Mike Daisey

God, there were like 25, 30 throughout the course of the day.

Ira Glass

As for Mike's findings, we have gone through his script and
fact checked everything that was checkable. In one instance, we
think that his translator may have misunderstood or
mistranslated a fact for Mike. He says in his show that workers
told him that the cafeterias at Foxconn seat 10,000 people, but
based on press accounts, we think that it's possible that they
serve 10,000 people, but seat only 4,000 at a time. Foxconn
wouldn't answer the question for us directly.

When it comes to the suicide rate at Foxconn, there were about
12 suicides at the Shenzhen plant in 2010. It was actually hard
to get the exact number. Some people have pointed out that 12
suicides for 400,000 workers is actually much lower than
China's suicide rate as a whole, as China has an unusually high
suicide rate of 22 suicides per year per 100,000 people. That
would work out to 88 suicides for 400,000 workers. Mike Daisey
points out that we don't actually know if these were the only
suicides at Foxconn.

Mike Daisey

And the biggest problem is that it isn't the quantity, it's the
cluster. If there was any company in America where a sizable
chunk of your workforce went up over a period of time,
especially close to one another, and killed themselves in the
same way very publicly, it would be an enormous news story
because it's far outside the norm.

Ira Glass

Overall, we checked with over a dozen people. Those would be
journalists who cover these factories, people who work with the
electronics industry in China, activists, labor groups, about
the working conditions that Mike Daisey describes in his show,
and nobody seemed very surprised by them.

Ian Spaulding

Well unfortunately I think some of these conditions sound
actually quite common.

Ira Glass

This is Ian Spaulding, who estimates that he has been in or
worked with about 1,000 factories throughout China. The company
that he founded and runs, INFACT Global Partners, goes into
Chinese factories and helps them meet social responsibility
standards that are set by Western companies so those companies
are ready when outside auditors come and check on working
conditions. He has a staff of 45. They do hundreds of factories
a year, including electronics.

Ian Spaulding

There are hours in factories that are often too long, and are
excessive, and required over time. Things like cramped quarters can also happen,
and repetitive motion injuries can be quite common.

Ira Glass

Another thing that Mike Daisey says that's disturbing to hear
is he says that the companies will deceive the auditors when
the auditors come in. Have you seen that?

Ian Spaulding

Yeah, that actually is quite common, and I think many other
people have also exposed this problem.

Ira Glass

Now don't get the wrong impression. Ian Spaulding did have a
few quibbles with Mike Daisey. He said that if a worker gets
injured and then is fired by his company, he or she can sue the
company, and he said that lots of people were doing that these
days. He said electronics companies have been improving their
handling of toxic chemicals.

And his only real objection to anything that Mike Daisey found
had to do with child labor. Ian Spaulding said yes, there
definitely is child labor in China, but not at the top tier
electronics manufacturers. Other people who we talked to agreed
with this. Even people who are critical of Foxconn for all
kinds of things agreed with this. He said maybe a stray worker
here and there might get in on a borrowed ID, but it is not a
widespread problem.

Mike Daisey

Well I don't know if it's a big problem. I just know that I saw
it.

Ira Glass

Again, Mike Daisey. He says sure, maybe it's not prevalent.

Mike Daisey

I know that I met people that were there, and I know that I
talked to them. I mean, there weren't very many as a proportion
of the total group. I talked to more than 100 people. I met
five or six who were underage.

Ira Glass

And they were over the course of days?

Mike Daisey

No, they were together in a group.

Ira Glass

So it's basically the girl who you describe who deals with the
iPhones--

Mike Daisey

Yes.

Ira Glass

--who wipes off your thing, and then her friends?

Mike Daisey

And then some people that were with her. They seemed like savvy
kids, honestly.

Ira Glass

The one source that I could find that backs up Mike on this one
at least a little bit is Apple. Apple has released a report
stating in the year that Mike was in China, 2010, Apple's own
auditors went into 127 facilities around the world that make
its products and say they found 91 underage workers. It doesn't
say which facilities the workers were at. The report states
that Apple helped install systems to verify ages, educated
suppliers on recruiting practices, made them return underage
workers to school, and made them pay for the kids' education.
And then it stopped doing business with one supplier that has
42 underage workers and showed no commitment to addressing the
problem.

All this research that we did did fill in some interesting
details about working conditions at Foxconn that are not in
Mike Daisey's show. There's an advocacy group called SACOM,
which is Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior.
They're based in Hong Kong. And since the suicides at Foxconn
in 2010, they have put out three reports investigating
conditions at the company. Each report surveyed over 100
Foxconn workers.

And they even had a researcher go undercover and take a job at
the Shenzhen plant. Debby Chan Sze Wan is a project manager at
SACOM. The surveys that she did of workers depict a company
where many employees have to stand all day long.

Debby Chan Sze Wan

Because there's some research in the industry that workers who
stand during work is more efficient than those who sit. And
workers, they are regularly yelled by the supervisors. And if
they make some mistake then they have to write confession
letters, et cetera.

Ira Glass

In your documents, you call this military-style management. Why
is that what you call it?

Debby Chan Sze Wan

I think it is the word given by some of the workers.

Ira Glass

According to SACOM's surveys and reports, the wages at Foxconn
are not much more than the Chinese minimum wage. SACOM claims
that it's only with tons of overtime that the money approaches
what SACOM calculates is a decent living wage for a family.

But probably the most surprising thing I learned about Foxconn
and other Chinese electronics manufacturers from Debby and from
Ian Spaulding had to do with the turnover rate. Ian Spaulding
says that it could be 10% to 20% turnover per month. He says
it's a huge business problem these days in China.

Ian Spaulding

So you imagine the number of employees that you're hiring and
that leave after one week, two weeks, one month on the job, and
you're constantly trying to re-hire people into those
positions.

Ira Glass

With so many workers quitting, why doesn't that lead to
companies changing conditions and raising salaries so they
don't have to go through the hassle of hiring new people?

Ian Spaulding

Well that's the good news, is it is. Nowadays a lot of people
talk about what should companies' brands, US and European
brands, do to make conditions better? And the reality is is
that actually what's proving to be more effective is this
bottom-up labor market that's emerging where employees are
speaking with their feet. By leaving a factory, they're forcing
factories to improve wages, improve working conditions, and
improving dormitories to make things more attractive for
employees.

Ira Glass

When Apple turned down our invitation to come onto today's
radio show, in a rather Orwellian gesture they told us that
they are 100% transparent-- as they refused to come on the air.
They referred us to these reports that they've been issuing
every year since 2007 on working conditions in the factories
that make their products overseas.

And these reports, I have to say, are remarkable documents. You
can find these online at Apple's website. Apple, like many
companies, has a code of conduct that suppliers have to commit
to before they can do business with them, and each year Apple
audits many of the suppliers to make sure that they are
complying with the code. If they don't, then there are
corrective action plans, and there's training, and there's
follow-up audits. It's very elaborate. And if it all fails,
Apple stops buying from the supplier. Or that's what they
claim, anyway.

Apple monitors pretty much all the working conditions that Mike
Daisey talks about in his show. The report covering the period
that Mike was in China. Talks about what Apple did in the wake
of the suicides at Foxconn. They say they did an independent
review. They asked for mental health counselors and other
changes, which Apple says Foxconn has implemented.

The report also has a whole section on n-hexane, which workers,
not from Foxconn but from another plant, told Mike that they
were exposed to, and he talked about it on his show. Apple says
that it found 137 workers had adverse health effects after
exposure to n-hexane. It says that the supplier using the stuff
was told to stop using the chemical, and it's been audited
since then to make sure it has happened. Mike Daisey has read
these reports.

Mike Daisey

I'm glad Apple does this. It's unfortunate more companies don't
do it, and I do respect them for doing it. But it doesn't
change the fact that the situation on the ground, even in their
own reports, is not good. And then every year the numbers are
roughly the same in terms of people who are non-compliant with
overtime.

Ira Glass

Yeah, I would say that in the 2010 report, Apple found that
only 32% of suppliers that it audited followed its standard
about working hours, though Apple doesn't name the companies
that they audited in the report.

Mike Daisey

And I really question the wisdom of that. I think that if they
have a serious commitment to changing how things are done in
the special economic zone in Shenzhen, then they would name
those companies, and then those companies would begin to be
held responsible.

Ira Glass

As it is, Daisey says, Apple is basically saying, trust us, we're
taking care of the problems. But without supplier names, nobody
can independently verify any of it. Should we feel weird about
the computers and phones we use, all the clothes that we wear
that are made in faraway factories in Asia under harsh working
conditions?